Leon

When we inherited Leon from our daughter he was a tiny little tyke of an iguana. He had the most luxurious 40 gallon aquarium to live in, and plenty of room to run and play. Unfortunately Leon did the thing that most tiny tykes do, he got bigger. I had thought of several ways to build him a new habitat, all of which would require me spending a lot of time I didn’t really have to spare, what with my jet setting all over the world, curing stupidity, and advising heads of state, I simply didn’t have the time. Well, all that and there was a great race on tv.

On a trip to Chicago to visit our friends Dave and Vicki (ChainzOnline) Diane noticed a display case sitting in the garage. It was left over from his brother’s business that burned down, and just sitting there. All 36 cubic feet of it, that’s 270 gallons compared to his original 40 gallon home. A quick $100 later and a trip to Indiana , and we have the beginnings of Leon’s new home.

New Iguana Home

The first step was to clean it up and get it mobile. Diane cleaned the new iguana cage with a vinegar and water solution to be as friendly to Leon as possible, and then we set the entire case up on a pair of furniture dollies. I could have beefed up the base itself and then added casters directly to the case, but dollies were a lot faster and easier.

Home on wheels

I had originally planned to fill the bottom of the new iguana habitat with play sand or something like that, but Michelle pointed out that all that sand could cause Leon to get sick, maybe even die. Apparently Iguanas lick everything they get close to and having all that sand in their digestive track could plug them up pretty bad. So then I thought small pea gravel, wrong again. Everyone suggests paper, or old t-shirts, anything digestible basically. Since I wasn’t prepared for that we placed some NASCAR special checkerboard contact paper over the wood to help keep the spilled water from rotting out the wood base.

Diane doing the short people stuff

The next step was to put together a glass shelf for Leon to perch on and set up his new tree and swimming pool. The tree is a bit too big, but not so much that I’ll take it out right away, but the pool is perfect. We found it at Lowes, the streamlet cascade for $11.00. So far we have a little less than $200 total invested in this project so I’m happy with it so far. Especially when you take in to account the amount of time it would have taken to build the new home I had planned to build.

The New Home

I added a heavy branch from the back field, and tried to balance the new home for an early move in date for Leon. We still have a lot to do to it to finish it. We need to make sure that the temperature is balanced, possibly add a heating pad under the pond, and definitely some automatic misters, after I add electric to the wall the new iguana habitat is on. But for now, we’ll let Leon adjust to his new home a while before we mess with him some more.

That's a whole lot of house